Backslider
by Dan the Splordintacular
Summary: For about one line, Ms. Rowling mentions the top-secret Department of Mysteries. The story is thus: the Backsliders, an extremely secret and powerful team of the most powerful witches and wizards on the planet, have been brought together once again, and m
1. Therapy

Chapter 1

**_Therapy_**

_"I wanted to tell you my story  
How my life seemed to change in a matter of days  
The heavens break I am walking tall  
How come change always seems to bring the rain"_

_                                                -The Verve_

 "Clearly, Jonathan, you're not going to be able to keep this up," he breathed with a laugh. "It's a self-destructive cycle, really. That's not the technical term, of course, but I'm sure you understand." 

Reclined in his chair, a short, stocky and, for the most part, balding man gazed out the window laughing uncomfortably, and was presently staring at the cars whizzing past down below. Silence.

Turning back to the figure sitting across the room, he continued, "Oh, silly me. Of course you do. You're a smart fellow, after all." He laughed. "Well, we both know that, now don't we?"

Silence.

The droning bald man spoke again with an exasperated sigh, "Honestly, though. Are you really happy with this new job of yours? It just doesn't seem to suit you." 

At the continuing silence, he lazily flipped through the thin brown folder on his lap and went on to scribble some more nonsense Jonathan could not have made out. That is, he could not have made out the scrawled writing had he bothered to look. Rather, he seemed utterly content to pick at the peeling fabric of the couch. 

Unabated, the man drawled, "You have a severe inadequacy complex, I'm going to be honest." His faded, old eyes began to tear up sympathetically, no doubt from years of practice. "I don't blame you for being confused, after all, but this won't do." He sighed heavily. "Blowing things up and all, or whatever it is, I know you don't enjoy it." The now rather irritating fellow noted down more garbage. The figure noted the peeling wallpaper. 

Jonathan, a tall, black haired man groaned loudly. "Wowee."

"What's that?"

"You've got me totally figured out, haven't you?"

The fat man made a sound that could only be likened to a sick dying moose being mauled by a panther. Of course, no one in the room recognized the comparison, either because panthers usually don't eat moose or that no one really sticks around to listen when it happens. This is, in many ways, for the same reason one doesn't stick around to document their own death at the hands of the aforementioned panther in the interest of zoology.

"Well…"

Jonathan was bored with this tired affair and decided that now would be a good time to have some fun before leaving. "It's all my mother's fault. She never loved me. Not enough hugs, you see." He left that hanging in the air, but as the doctor gaped, he continued unabated, "You see, I used to be beaten as a boy—locked in my father's desk drawer. I had to survive off paperclips and pushpins for several years." Feeling on a roll, he concluded, "When I got out, it was by accident. Seems dear old Dad sold the desk to some smelly old man. Boy… he was sure shocked to find a naked 6 year-old instead of a more substantial number of pushpins and paperclips. Priceless moment."

 "I'm sorry?"

"Right you should be." Jonathan grinned a manic smile only years of practice could bring. The eerie silence was interrupted only by a faint _chirrup! _from his pocket. Reaching in, but still maintaining the horrific grimace and total eye contact, he withdrew his hand and a thin and shiny slip of metal—a silver cigarette lighter. He flipped open the cover and, in the relative shadow of the bare office, Jonathan's face glowed in it's eerie blue light. As his eyes peered into the dancing fire, he whispered to it intently and then placed the lighter a few inches from his ear, nearly setting his black hair aflame. 

"Tell me again, Sam: what I've told you about calling me on this line?" He paused and casually stood and walked to the window. The morning's sunny amber light shadowed his face, reflecting the manic grin now turned back on the disagreeable old man, apparently lost in thought, as though he weren't trying to listen in on the peculiar conversion. 

"You really think so? Hmm…" he continued. He also smiled.

"Ah… ahh… no, not yet, but I'll _certainly_ keep that in mind. But I'm afraid you're just going to have to ask—," he replied.

He relocated the lighter to his lips. "No! _He scares me too_, but… oh, come on…" he hissed to the fire, making an "I'm so sorry" motion with his free hand to the vacant lounging man.

"Sam, look. I'm busy right now," he whispered. 

"No, I can't… if you must know…" at this, Jonathan strolled to farthest corner of the room and whispered some more exasperated commands. 

He sat and, after a pause, the man asked the inevitable, "Is everything all right?" question.

"Is what all right?"

"Erm… everything?"

"You know what? I'm going to have to go."  Jonathan darted around the room, picking up his discarded coat, shoes, and hat. 

"What?" he gasped with feigned sadness. "But we were making _so_ much progress!"

"Not so much, actually. To tell you the truth, I don't think I'll be coming back. Ever again," he sighed.

"But… but… your treatment!" the man croaked.

"I think we should just be friends. Besides… our relationship was, _of course_, purely sexual in nature. I just don't think there's much of a future between us in that case." Jonathan said with a reassuring nod. Brushed away imaginary tears, he reached for the doorknob. "Well, then... Bye!" he exclaimed, darting out the door and down the hallway at a brisk run.

Left in a state of shock, Dr. Tucker was, of course, shocked. Several minutes of open-mouthed gaping was abruptly stopped by Jonathan's sudden return.

Ignoring the remarkable impression of a fish Dr. Tucker was currently acting out, Jonathan grinned, though not quite as manically as before. "So, sorry. Forgot this." 

The "this" was the thin folder still resting on the doctor's enormous thighs. 

"Ermm…" he began. 

"Yes?" Jonathan replied with an innocent smile from the door.

"You can't take that out of here." he concluded, jumping up with a wobble. Jonathan made his way out the door, as Dr. Tucker threatened to call security.

"Really? Oh. Sorry. Well, then let me apologize—" Jonathan began, but with a flick of wrist, pulled a thin foot-long rod of wood from his sleeve. Dr. Tucker went back into his confused stupor. 

"_Somniferus!_" Jonathan exclaimed. 

Dr. Tucker fell backwards and narrowly avoided a comfortable landing. Suddenly bug-eyed, Dr. Tucker's eyes quickly crossed and closed. Anyone who walked into the room at that moment might have thought him dead, had it not been for the remarkable volume of his snores. No one walked in. That was a good thing.

"Oh, whoops," Jonathan muttered. _Wrong one… I was trying to kill the bastard._ "Ah well." Proceeding to pinch the doctor's cheek, Jonathan cooed, "You've got no idea who I am, do you?" The doctor snored his response. "Hm. Well… just to make sure."

He kicked the doctor and, as he started to rouse, Jonathan added, "_Roseate!_"

Dr. Tucker's sleepy eyes suddenly widened alarmingly, blinked, and looked fearfully around the room. "Mr. Mercier?" he squinted.

"Um, yes?" Jonathan replied charmingly.

"Why are you still here? Is everything all right?" Tucker asked confusedly.

"Everything's fine. I was just on my way out, when you keeled over."

"Oh. But everything's fine now…" he said confidently.

"Yep. _Everything's fine_. Bye now." Jonathan finished hauntingly. As he left, Dr. Tucker sat staring emptily out the window, muttering to himself with a happy smile on his face. "Everything's fine. Fine, fine, fine…"

Jonathan reached the elevator, and smiled to a businessman as he exited the lift. "Stupid Muggles," he muttered.


	2. Reflections

**Chapter 2**

**_Reflections_**

"So take your time  
I wonder if you're here just to use my mind  
Don't take it slow   
You know I've got a place to go  
You always do that  
Something I'm not sure of  
But just for today  
Let go and slide away"

            _-The Verve_

Jonathan Mercier flounced his way out the front door in a very flouncing manner. Actually, Jon had no idea what flouncing was, but didn't really care. The few minute setback with the doctor delayed him considerably. A few minutes, in fact, which he then considered just to make sure. Walking absentmindedly, he withdrew a thin flat slip of metal and flipped open the cover. To most people, he might have looked rather odd. 

For you see, although Mr. Mercier looked respectable enough, handsome enough, and normal enough, there was something very much amiss, which, no doubt, those around him may have recognized. First of all, he was walking very slowly. Secondly, he seemed totally preoccupied with the blue screen resting in his palm. Busily tapping at the pad, he took no notice of the three times he should have been pasted to the grill of a bus, the angry obscenity of drivers suddenly screeching to a halt to wait for his leisurely stroll across the intersection, and the gum now firmly in place on his new shoes. It was almost as though he had not the slightest idea of the annoyance he was now causing to those around him, with the _squeek-squeek-squeek_ accompanying the footfalls of his latest footwear. Actually, he was very much aware both of his behavior and the annoyance it was causing.

He liked to be annoying.

He especially felt it was a nice warm-up for important business meetings, like the one he was now making his way towards. Glancing at the blinking clock _chirruping_ cleverly, he noticed just how late he was. Very. So, with hardly a thought, Jonathan leapt into the next store. Stashing his metal pad, he was disappointed at the sight that met his eyes. He had walked straight into a trap. A deadly one at that. He had entered that vast schism between the worlds of both Public Decency and Public Humiliation. He had entered The Gap.

"Insufferable gits," he said to no one in particular. _The sooner I get this over with, the sooner this'll all be over._ He thought too soon, for at the very moment, a flock of creatures closely resembling a group of Feathered Lurcasian Payks he had encountered a few days earlier in Bolivia swooped in from several feet to the left of the door. It is worth noting that Lurcasian Payks, particularly the feathered variety as reported in Kiggle Lienham's _Encyclopedia of Really Vile Creatures and How to Best Exterminate Them_, closely resemble very large polka-dotted camels, though with very large teeth, and a body odor like that of a thousand desiccated corpses. In this case, the only difference would be that the body odor was actually Kevin Clean's new Eau de Toilette, entitled _"Oblivious."_

"You got here just in time!" one harpy exclaimed.

"Quickly! Quickly! Out of that… _thing_ you're wearing!" screeched another.

"Have you seen our recent supply of Polysynth Neckties?!? Just follow me!" one more added with a crazed cackle.

"I just wanted to… use your bathroom!" Jonathan screamed, shoving two or three about ten feet to his right, and another four feet into the air. He would have darted out the door at that moment and found another way to the meeting, had it not been blocked by some hefty men (_"Are they men?" he thought with a shudder_). Not to waste any more time, Mercier kicked open the door to the restroom and slammed it shut with a grunt of relief. "Now, on to the good stuff." Looking into his reflection, he pulled the thin branch of wood from his pocket, and put it to his head, mumbling "_Proplaeum!_" As he did so, his reflection began to shimmer. With a hiss, fizzle, and bang (in that precise order), Jonathan found himself standing on a table.

It wasn't a very nice table. Neither was the bar in which it sat. _This is definitely the place. _The bar was actually quite nasty. It was stuffy, filled, with smoke, and filled with jazz music. It was also, coincidentally, the exactly right place.

"I wouldn't be caught dead—" he mumbled.

"What's that?" said an obscenely tall, obscenely muscular hunk of mass directly behind him. Lifting Jon about four feet into the air, Jon screeched.

"What the f—" Jon exclaimed.

"— am I doing here?" the mass finished with a wide toothy smile as he rotated Jon 180 degrees.

"Sam… you're an absolute bastard."

"Now, now. Not in front of the muggles." Sam replied, "I've got a room in the back." 

The room was, in fact, a closet. Or, at least, it may as well have been, it was so cramped with a 400 pound beast named Samuel Christophell (_"on a warm day, no less," Jonathan thought_).

"Why the Gap?"

"What's that?" Sam replied pretending not to have heard.

"The Gap. Why set up a Propylon in a place widely recognized as the Black Hole of All Despairing and foremost cause of modern social degradation?" Mercier ranted.

"WELL, I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE OBVIOUS!!" Sam boomed.

"_Samuel James Christophell, _would you care to enlighten us?" Mercier stood poking Samuel in the chest. He looked rather ridiculous;  as Jon had to look straight up to even see the man's face. He didn't seem to care.

Picking up a nearby lamp, and crushing it in a mess of crackle of flame and metal with his fist, he breathed, "Because it's safer."

"Ah."

"Look, Mercier. We can't afford to be careless anymore. The Department of Mysteries has noticed a rise in Dark activity these days, especially in London. You know as well as I that these people can be anyone… and no one would have the slightest clue who they are until they've cursed you 'til you can't walk," the giant whispered, "You know as well as I that… we can't be too careful is all."

"But a Gap? On a sales weekend?"

Sam Christophell laughed, "You also know that one of the only ways to defeat a powerful Dark is with Dark forces of your own..."

"£29.99 for a hideous pair of pants? They should make that an Unforgivable."

"Damned right. By the way, what'd you do with the doctor?" Sam asked.

"Those classes came in handy. Well, at least we learned a few tricks. I knocked him out, then used _Roseate _to make him think he'd fallen off his chair. Forgot the last six hours," Jon said proudly.

"And I'm sure that was an accident that you used an experimental charm on a muggle, then?" Sam asked knowingly.

"Oh, but of course! I was certainly _not _hoping I might _accidentally_ blow him up into a bunch of little fat and bald chunks, or at least transfigure him into a member of the mallard family..." Jon replied dismissively.

"Uh huh…" Sam said with a look of playful disbelief.

"Shut up. Now, what did you want that I had to go through that mess back there?"

"Ah… well, I've been talking with Croaker…" Sam drifted off.

"And? What did old Mr. Freakishly-Pale-Knife-Throwing-Enthusiast have to say?"

Christophell looked at his feet, "Well, he says that he thinks the Death Eaters are getting ready."

"See? I told you Croaker's an ass. We've all known the damned Eaters have been getting ready for… what has it been… three years?"

"But he knows what for…"

"He knows?"

"That 'ass' has enough Seers, Readers, and Wraiths on his left shoulder to populate a small country."

"But he couldn't possibly… there's no way they'd start out so big. Besides, they've got enough Masking charms… I mean, we've already got a dozen units in place around the Forest. The Wards we've set up would at least shut out the Dementors… you couldn't pull off an _alohomora_ in that place. But, why would he make his move now? It doesn't add up."

"I agree, Jon. Voldemort's a strategist. He likes to plan things out for years and years before making his move. But Bode and Croaker are _sure_. Apparently people are disappearing. All sorts, though. Muggles, squibs, muggle-borns, even members of the old purebloods. Actually, after I called you, I talked to Bode. He's freaking out. He says there's no pattern at all to it. It's actually scaring him."

"Bode?" Jon knew very well that when Hieronymus Bode displayed any human emotion, it was a serious time indeed. "So, what do they want us to do?"

"They say they want to call in the Backslider's." 

At that moment, Jonathan Mercier said something that sounded roughly like, "Oh my God…" Yet there may have been something that followed, but it was lost as he fell to the floor with a loud _thwump!_


	3. We Never Change

THIS HARRY POTTER FICTION CONTAINS PASSING DISCUSSION OF ADULT THEMES: 

IF YOU ARE OFFENDED BY SUCH THEMES, PLEASE DO NOT COME CRYING TO ME ABOUT IT (SO GET OFF MY LAWN!!)

YOU HAVE BEEN FOREWARNED

Chapter 3

We Never Change

**__**

"… So, I wanna live in a wooden house,  
Making more friends would be easy,  
I wanna live where the sun comes out…"

_                        -Coldplay_

It was 10 minutes later that Jonathan Mercier did not awake with a start. Rather, he awoke with a nauseated kind of confusion, the sort one gets after being beaten over the head with a large oak desk. He noted, _Well at least I'm not dead. That's got to count for something, don't it? _However, the very moment following this thought, he thought it time to edit it with a well placed, c_learly not. _

In fact, it took him a few seconds to recall his location. He clearly remembered a very smelly bar with really terrible jazz playing in the background. He also remembered a really large man crushing a very nasty looking lamp. He found it. He was right. He also found Sam. Actually, it might be fairer to say that Sam found Jon.

"Damn," he began while setting a large bucket of water with a _slosh_ on the floor. "And here I was, hoping to use this, too."

"Sorry about that," Jon replied, helping him to a very old beer he found stashed under the bed. "And here I was, hoping you wouldn't. Found what I was looking for!" Jon swiftly turned around, and fumbled around on the floor. Now, he stood up and brandished it triumphantly.

"Clever boy."

"I like to think so."

"Clearly."

"Yes."

"So…  why were you looking for my underwear?" the giant added.

"Yeah…" Jon replied.

"Ermmm…" the giant indulged.

"Hmm, hmm, hmm… my cover's blown, innit?" Jon ventured.

"Not clever for nothing, I see. Shut up. Just after you decided to take a nap, we got an owl. Nasty big black thing. Pecked up the barman something awful." Sam said slapping an envelope on a nearby table. "This one's yours."

"What is it?" Jon asked whilst poking the envelope. It had some interestingly dark splatters of blood all over it.

"Well, my amazing psychic powers tell me that you should probably just try opening the damn thing and leave me alone!"

"Whatever," Jon replied lazily. He flipped the envelope over. He stared at it. "This isn't what I think it is… is it?"

"Maybe. But, then again, I don't know what you think it is."

Under a very strained and very threatening squint from Sam, he tapped the seal with his wand. _"Garrulus!" _he said, knowing what to do. With that, the plain black wax of the seal appeared to cover the entire envelope with a rasping rattle, like that of a dying man, or a really nasty children's toy. A second later, the letter shrunk to the size of a blank black business card. Holding the card up to the light, the word "CROAKER," written in white, suddenly appeared. At that very moment, the card burst into flames, crumpling to the ground.

"Wordy as usual, I see." Jonathan lazily spun his wand in his right hand. "You'd best watch your back Sam and keep on your toes—he might yet beat you to Poet Laureate."

"Right, then," Sam said doing a good but rather draining job of imitating someone who was going a good but rather draining job of totally ignoring Jonathan. I guess we're going to the same place, but Croaker's had me on other errands besides babysitting little balls of whimpering wizard." Sam pulled Jon from his leathery perch and set him roughly on his feet. "You know the policy, but I'm supposed to remind you: no apparating or magic under any circumstances _until you're back at the Ministry._ We're all targets right now. Mindy Presh told me yesterday that the Darks have probably got Targeting Runes on us."

"That's kind of overkill, even for a power-mad incarnation of all evil…"

"You've got to take this seriously. Voldemort's not going to be complacent or careless. His Darks know that he has no tolerance for--"

"Failure," Jon finished. "Yes, we've been over this. You-Know-Who has never tolerated failure, but his Darks are desperate to please their Master."

"And they want us."

Mercier opened the door and looked sadly at Samuel Christophell. "Things never change, do they?"

Striding over to Jon, Samuel placed a heavy hand on his shoulder. "No Jon, things change, but _we _never will."

Jonathan pulled his coat around him and walked swiftly out the door, scratching the back of his neck.


	4. Tumbling Down

Chapter 4

Tumbling Down

**__**

_"Was it loneliness that brought you here?_

_Broken and weak_

_Was it tiredness that made you sleep?_

_Have you lost your will to speak?_

_Was the earth spinning round?_

_Were you falling through the ground?_

_As the world came tumbling down_

_You prayed to God what have we done…"_

_-Zero 7_

As Jonathan Mercier stepped briskly out of the jazz bar, clouds of smoke and terrible music in tow, he loudly and quite inappropriately resolved to destroy the sun… or at least write a strongly worded letter. At that very moment, Sam's orders fell into their places within Jonathan's cranium. _"No apparating or magic," _he had said. _That shouldn't be too hard to get around… _Ten long years in this business hadn't taught Mercier nothing. In fact, less than a dozen people knew that among Jonathan Mercier's numerous talents was a dangerous understanding of the more… icky spells. He also understood, like all of its employees, that the Department of Mysteries was a lot like every other department in the Ministry of Magic with some numerous… differences. 

Firstly, it had no static location. That had been decided at the Third International Magical Cooperation Initiative's Organization of Administrative Groupings of Ambassadors League in 1959 after Arkazior Splinktorfeld defeated the Dark Lord Grindelwald. **"And it is further decided that any and all buildings of magical/occult purposes as defined by Article 194B of the _Magical People's Constitution _must be protected from the knowledge of Muggles by either Sight Shield Runes, Dimensional Geometry Redefining Artifacts, or Physical Barriers able to be disabled by suitable Passwords."[*1] **Diagon Alley, for instance, was protected by the last option (a brick wall opened by three taps of a wand on a specific brick). The entrance to Platform 9 and ¾ could only be accessed through bypassing the illusion of a wall and possessing knowledge of what lay beyond, created by a classic Forncurian Runic Sight Shield. Certain magical delis in London require patrons to recite the password "_Imartsap!_"

If one needed to, the various Ministry entrances could be found by wandering around London long enough. In fact, magically sealed Secret Entrances tended to be found by not looking for them. Jonathan smiled as he remembered the time the entrance to the Department of Oddities Most People Excepting Our Employees Of Course Would Find Particularly Interesting (OMPEOEOCWFPI for short) had shifted into one of the shower stalls in a woman's bathroom at a popular muggle gym. However, no one had ever figured out how Jonathan knew about the "accident" if he had never even heard of the Department of OMPEOEOCWFPI. 

            The second nugget of interest, and the most important, was that the Department of Mysteries itself could not be reached by any magical means for security reasons. Due to the highly sensitive nature of everything and everyone in the Department, its designers had been allowed some "exceptions." Although the building would be shielded and protected by the most powerful Warding Charms in existence, the only way to ensure security would be to force visitors to walk in through the front door… so to speak.

            Thankfully, the Department of Mysteries was the only department with a stable entrance, though it wasn't in a very pleasant location. London, like most other major cities had huge districts reserved entirely for the magical community. In New York, for example, most buildings had an invisible extra dozen floors that could only be seen and accessed by magical people. London had miles of magical land that appeared nonexistent to muggle onlookers. It was to this area, known as Felle City, that Mercier would now go. Of course, trying to access a magical area using no magic would be difficult for most, but not so for someone who had done it hundreds of times before.

The first thing, of course, would be to get as close to Felle City's boundaries as quickly and discreetly as possible.

            There were some flaws in that plan, however. The most glaring was that he had no idea where he was. Sam's Propylon charm had totally disoriented him. He distinctly remembered having been on Oxford Street back at the Gap, but the _proplaeum _charm had thrown him across the city to some terrible pub-which, of course, meant the East End… So, that meant the fastest way to Felle City would be to get to be to the fringe of all human civilization… Epping. _Yuck_, he thought to himself. Mercier had some uncomfortable memories about that place. Five years after joining the Department of Mysteries, the gang had played a prank on him in the middle of the road involving 17 tons of coffee beans, 3 gift certificates to various places Jonathan Mercier would never, ever, be caught in (unless dead, or doing a fine impression of it), a mallet, a few gypsies covered in thick custard, and, among other things, 110 of those muggle ceiling fans. It was not a pleasant memory. He still had the same lower back pain and aversion to pickles.

            If memory served, it would be relatively straightforward to get to Epping. _Just hop onto the Central Line and get off a few dozen stops later,_ he thought confidently. _So, secret agent man, you've got to sneak yerself onto a public transit system most consider bothersome and degrading and crowded, without not get spotted by Darks, no less. Then what?_ If Sam were right, as Sam tended to be about security issues, then he, Sam, and everyone from his Department would be targets for any Dark wizards in the entire city. The course was clear, and off he went.

            The walk to the metro and subsequent ride and on "the tube" [*2] was rather uneventful. Aside from the usual groping by scary old men, pushing, muggings of old ladies (excuse me… **_by_** old ladies), and disturbing noises from nearby bathrooms, that is. After way too long of a time, Jonathan emerged from the depths feeling rather… floopy (if you take my meaning---if not: GET OFF MY LAWN!). Nonetheless, there he was, so that had to count for something. Looking around him, he saw that it really didn't. Shuddering as he passed the very spot of his earlier assault, he recalled the pygmy tribesman and custard covered gypsies who had sung 70's disco music with accompanying music, lights, and dance floor. That was before it got bad.

            Jonathan rarely visited Felle City; although it had some nice and pleasant bits to it, like any city, it had many more nasty and… unlikable bits. Nonetheless, it was work. He strolled looking positively unlikely to be a secret agent for the Ministry of Magic and more like a rather mad git. He was whistling. Poorly.

            Before long, the muggles around him dwindled and went back to their little muggle homes suddenly remembering they had pressing business that simply could not wait another interesting. The reason was that Felle City had some really powerful Muggle Repelling Charms placed over every inch of it. Looking down from a plane, one would see a perfectly normal stretch of the outskirts of London. But, if you happened to know what was actually there, you'd be able to see through the illusion and into the world's largest all-magic community.

            The city itself looked quite a bit like London, actually. Architects of magic buildings had a strange love of the old muggle constructs. Of course, like most magical structures, there were quite a lot of buildings that tended to switch places, or be a different color on different days. Flodo Krighak, the famous wizard engineer designed the famous Promentrak building, which, during rainstorms, angrily shouted obscenities and liked to become ice cream out of spite. 

            However, Jonathan would be heading to the far side of the city, to Hope Street, the oldest, most dangerous area in the entire country. Rapture addicts and gang members had overwhelmed the police force and taken control of the city years ago. However, since they mostly kept to themselves, and rarely left the confines of that area of the city, the police were content to let them continue. (_A/N: I'm assuming that the magical community has it's own subcultures, drugs, and issues that are quite similar to our own. Rapture is a fictional drug I heard about somewhere that I'm adapting for my story. I've decided that Rapture is just one of many dangerous and powerful injected drugs that are part of the magical community, at least for the purposes of this fic. Rapture is a hallucinogen and stimulant that, like most drugs, is chemically addictive. Side effects include: death, severe bodily harm, mortal peril, temporary insanity, and total loss of control over magical abilities. Moving on:_).  Discussion of why the Ministry had decided to stick the Department of Mysteries in such a nasty place always left Mercier aghast, bewildered, dizzy, and strangely hungry. As he strolled, Mercier tended to keep darting in and out of alleyways, peering around the corner, and, deciding that he wasn't about to be stabbed in the throat, continued to shuffle through Felle City's crowded streets. This central area wasn't that bad though. There were pleasant restaurants, bars, and musicals playing in nearby buildings (Bats! The Longest Running Musical Featuring Airborne Small Mammals Whose Name Rhymes With That of Another Musical Clearly Inferior to This One!). Abruptly, however, Mercier's tall, dark, musically challenged figure that looked _positively unlikely to be a secret agent for the Ministry of Magic _but still like _a rather mad git_ would leap back into the shadows and into the sewer for cover from absolutely no attack. Nonetheless, he resolved to stay in the sewer, although what lives in magical sewers is best not to be though about. _The things people throw away… _Mercier thought to himself. _I mean, here's a perfectly good pair of gloves lying around. A bit tight, though. Hey… GAHH! Those… aren't gloves…_ He now decided never to touch anything ever again without proper lighting. Speaking of which, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a thimble-sized vial of watery goo. _Don't worry, Sam. No magic… but no one said_ *_anything* about potions…" _Mercier prided himself on his extensive collection of odd mixtures stashed neatly in his pants. Carefully loosening the cap, Jonathan tipped the vial onto the ground in front of him. With a fizz, wobblerflate (a type of whirr), and flash, the entire sewer glowed brightly, though not with the glow of decaying nuclear waste, but of a bright, clear-skied day. Cautious to avoid anything alive, hungry, and green, Jonathan rushed down the fetid (_but well-lit!_) sewer. 

            An hour of jogging later, he pulled himself out of the sewer, brushed himself off (though what that would accomplish, he was not sure), and got his bearings. 

Towers of brick and stone billowed out of the neglected and crumbling street. A weaving mesh of "colorful" spray paint covered every surface within sight. It was, of course, magical. This meant that it could not be removed and got progressively more offensive as time went on. In the distance, a few minutes walk away, Mercier could see an ancient cathedral, the only building on the street that seemed untouched by the local gangs, as if an intractable barrier protected it from harm. The beautiful stained glass window at it's peak had miraculously survived any rocks thrown at it, as if it was actually made of some kind of muggle plastic, but he doubted it, though it was a funny thought. Father Laurislair was a terribly traditional man. In fact, he actually used normal muggle candles to light the Cathedral, not the everlasting ones you can buy anywhere these days. Well, anywhere, if you're a wizard. He said that even though it's not as cost-effective, some things should "be "left for tradition, and atmosphere." 

Tradition was something the Hope Street Cathedral most definitely had. It was one of the few buildings in the city older than any other in London. For a thousand years, this cathedral had stood, used by a few interested wizards and witches, who thought it quite an oddity. It was ancient as the most powerful magic, but untouched by time or change. About 200 years earlier, there had been a massive storm system, which wiped all of the original buildings of Felle City off the face of the Earth. The only building to survive the disaster was the Cathedral. Eventually, the city was rebuilt— on top of the remains, oddly enough. Survivors hadn't bothered to clear away the scraps of the original village, and simply covered them up. Hope Street was eventually created as a residence for Ministry employees, built around the cathedral. Quickly, however, Hope Street lost its hope and was left with the Cathedral: the last remaining beacon in this dark region of the city. 

Mercier pulled his coat closer to his body to fight the suddenly icy air, which he thought quite unusual for an afternoon in the summer. _Wouldn't a magical city have warming charms put on when it gets cold?_ He felt quite uncomfortable all of a sudden, but reassured himself that he was only a couple of minutes from the Department of Mysteries.

It was ten seconds later that Mercier had "a moment." These "moments," little bursts of sudden understanding, or revelations, are odd little things, and even weirder to have in middle of a sudden winter localized totally in the middle of a single street. In fact, the entire "moment" has been transcribed below, broken into even littler bits and pieces for the reader's convenience. Please chew thoroughly:

1. Felle City is a nice place

2. But it has nasty bits to it

3. Particularly Hope Street

4. Mercier was walking down the middle of a gang-infested and graffiti-covered street in a sudden winter bubble

5. Wintry bubbles don't happen in the middle of open streets unless it's winter

6. It's summer right now

7. So… this shouldn't be happening…

8. Unless they're magic bubbles or something…

9. _MAGIC BUBBLES!_

At that moment, the moment burst. On a side note, so did someone's brain, such is the price of having a sudden revelation---though the deceased victim does not relate to the plot of this story at all… so never mind. 

And so, with lightning quick reflexes (or at least really, really fast), Jonathan Mercier spun around backwards, drawing his wand. Seeing the total absence of attackers, Mercier had another "moment" (somewhere, a skull exploded with a "FWAM!" and a "Spatter, spatter…"). He now had an inkling of what was going on. He applied a puzzled look to his face and began to slowly turn again. Halfway through, however, he made his move.

With a sweep of his wand, he cried, "_OBSTINATUS!"__ At that moment, cold blue-green flames erupted from the tip and curled outward. The slithering cloud of flame dispersed into a dozen little pockets dotting the street. Disturbingly, the pockets became what could be described as "people-shaped." They then proceeded to be aptly called "people." Furthermore, they were people wearing featureless white masks and long black velvet cloaks. Carrying wands… scratch that, __brandishing wands. All around him._

"Oh," Jonathan whispered. "Hullo guys…"

The leader, who Jonathan identified by a long black staff of coiled wood capped with a glowing red stone that screamed "Hello! This guy's the leader! Over here! Hello!!" as loudly as "Tacky!" stepped forward. He proceeded to say nothing followed by a pause.

"Um, yes… hello?" Jonathan was now waving his free hand (his left) in front of the leader's masked face. He stopped. "Are you dead?"

No reply.

"Okay…" Jonathan said peering curiously at the man's masked face. "You know… maybe you could help me with something." It was here that Jonathan scratched his chin curiously. "I've always wondered… what's the deal with the masks? I mean, they're pretty silly, don't you think?"

No reply.

"Do you have, like, grotesque facial scarring or something?"

No reply.

"Oh… that's it! I knew it! Oh, tomorrow at the water cooler, we'll certainly have something to talk about! I thank you! One more day of discussing Torurian Sqellinkers and their mating habits… have you ever seen a pair on a warm day? Oh, if you had, you'd want to cover your face!" He cast his eyes downward and feigned great sadness and regret. He added his hand to the leader's shoulder. "I'm so sorry! I totally forgot…" he lowered his voice to a whisper, "…_your __problem." He grinned. _

No reply.

"How about a kiss, then?" Jonathan asked thoughtfully.

With a speed that rivaled Jonathan's own, the man grasped the top of the staff and pointed it at the now grinning figure. "_T__orpidus!" he exclaimed before Mercier even noticed what was happening._

Jonathan was, therefore, unexpectedly hurled backward with the force of a brick wall… a wall… that could… um… move… fast. He was now unable to move at all! In fact, to verify this conclusion he tried. He still couldn't move. He was right. He grinned, or made a mental note to do so as soon as his face began working again.

The leader pulled off his mask and cast it aside. He grinned, because he was able to. 

"Thank you for joining us, Mister Mercier."

Jonathan tried to reply, but managed to blink something quite rude. 

"Oh, what's the matter, Mister Mercier? Cat got your tongue?"

The rest of the Death Eaters laughed a forced laugh (for that is what they were, if you hadn't guessed). Jonathan knew for a fact that the Death Eaters were always a tough crowd, but would always laugh at any joke their leaders made no matter how _terribly terrible they were. In fact, for effect, the man, who was still outside of Mercier's realm of sight waved his wand lazily towards Jonathan's prone figure, and conjured a few dozen tabby kittens, who fell on his face and scampered down the street._

Jonathan blinked his reply.

"Now, Mister Mercier… what brings you to this part of town? Oh! Oh, wait… I forgot!" he leaned closer and whispered, "_your problem…"_

Jonathan had to admit it was kind of funny, but it seemed the Death Eaters had no grasping of ironic comedy. Alas…

"You've been hard to track down, Mister Mercier. Our little… group… has spent quite a but of our time, in fact, just to track you down after your visit to… that place," he finished with a ghastly grimace.

Jonathan, quite the detective, correctly assumed that he meant The-Gap-That-Must-Not-Be-Named.

"However, our… fun time is over. Thank you for dropping by." he whispered while circling Jonathan in the street with a loud stomping. "Arctus! Draw the circle!"

With that command, a man stumbled through the eerily static ranks of Death Eaters, assumedly Arctus, who reached into his robes and produced a long, thin piece of chalk. With fingers as long and thin as his implement, he began to etch a circle around Jonathan while mumbling in some strange language, probably hoping that he wouldn't realize what he was doing. Jonathan, however, knew precisely what was going on. He was temporarily paralyzed, not an idiot (though some might debate this). Arctus was drawing an Apparating Circle, which are complex things used only to safely amplify an apparition (the most common form of magical transport) for those incapable of performing the task themselves, such as for young children or, occasionally, paralyzed Death Eater victims trying to make a getaway.

Jonathan had been thinking about the curse since it happened. _The… Torpidus Curse? _He thought he'd been taught it back in school, years ago… it was Defense Against the Dark Arts with Professor… Flinvork? No, he was Charms… Gugnam? Right! So… Gugnam taught us about the Torpidus Curse just before Winter Break. They'd been playing around with it in the Hufflepuff Common Room, and Rubnil Gaffer had been hit by accident… then that smart ass… Yuri Proox came flouncing in and cast the counter curse… what had it been? It was at that moment that he had another one--a moment, that is, though not as profound as before and a lot less organized but just as much of a cranial hemorrhage somewhere (still not his own, and still relatively unrelated to this story). The counter curse was…

_"Ennervus Kindauram Selfne!" He said with sudden clarity of voice. Remarkably, he shouted. And grinned. And stood up. And used the famous Grin of Swiftly Descending Mania, the same he repeatedly flashed Dr. Tucker that morning. He was quite proud of himself as half a dozen Death Eaters recoiled in sweeping fear. He turned to face a cowering Arctus and an enraged… erm… leader (no name had yet been mentioned). Mercier squinted, but did not recognize the face. It seemed good-natured enough, excepting the scar on the left cheekbone and gaze so incising, a freshly sharpened lathe would have broken down and cried for death to come. Nonetheless, Jonathan continued his grin. The-Guy-Who-Apparently-Didn't-Feel-it-Necessary-to-Introduce-Himself faltered in his Death Gaze. Judging by what occurred next, he thought change of plans would be fun._

With the same speedy movement as before, he pointed his scepter at Jonathan and screamed with 1/3 hate, 1/4 loathing, and the remaining fraction of unmitigated malice, _"Camarilla!" At that, a hundred knives were conjured and flew through the air directly towards Jonathan. _

At the last moment, Jonathan carelessly waved his wand and mumbled, _"Bagata!" _

With that, the knives did one of two things. Either they exploded in midair or decided to simply bend around his body, happening to perforate a few four of the Death Eaters, leaving eight withdrawing Death Eaters to deal with. Jonathan, of course, wasn't an Unspeakable (and a Backslider, no less) for nothing at all. Therefore, he seriously decided to give these people a run for their money.

_"Adhesio Emplastron!" he intoned pointing his wand at his free hand (still his left). With a stream of bright green light spraying from the tip of his wand, he leapt with almost superhuman (magical) force to the very top of an archway at least 20 feet in the air, narrowly avoiding being set aflame. But, alarmingly, there he stayed suspended by a gluey green goo dripping from his left hand. Suddenly, the remaining solemn but recoiling Death Eater troops snapped out of their shock and began firing a stream of curses. However, he loosened himself in time and began scouring the side of the ugly brick building with great speed. The stream of hexes and charms following him ranged from the popular Splorchgard Splint (that covered the target in a skintight, unbendable shell) to the Townsend Blinkler (that temporarily trapped the victim several seconds ahead of the rest of the universe). He even suspected someone had used the Weinstein Greingrel (that irreversibly transfigured the target into the plant of the caster's choice) as a despondent palm tree now sprouted out the side of the wall. As the searing current of hexes and charms licked at his shoes, he halted abruptly, turned around, and hurled himself from the wall, flinging the glop in the eyes of several remaining Death Eaters._

With surprising nimbleness, he landed with a _flop! on his feet, where he proceeded to spin his wand half a foot above his hand grinning at the Fellow-With-a-Career-Most-People-Would-Find-to-be-in-Poor-Taste and the six black robed men flanking him. _

"So… you guys wanna quit? Seriously, I'd probably find a few years in Azkaban preferable to getting… skewered like these fellows." He pointed to the four motionless Death Eaters. "Or getting your eyes sealed shut with foul smelling goo…" He waved at the two men scrambling on the ground for something to remove the hardening slime from their eyes. "But each to his own I suppose."

At this, a few of the remaining Death Eaters backed away.

"Oh look… I'm scaring away your Death Eaters!" Jonathan said.

"Actually, I'm afraid the jury's still out on that one," their leader replied.

"Actually, I'm afraid you still haven't introduced yourself…"

"Actually, I'm afraid I'm going to have to kill you," the leader added.

"Odd… I was thinking the same thing about you," Jonathan countered thoughtfully.

"Good. Shall we?"

"Sure…" Jonathan answered. His wand fell into his hand as he bellowed, "PREPARE TO HAVE YOUR HAIR STYLED!" 

The few seconds of confusion this bought him was all he needed. As one of the Death Eaters forgot he was wearing a hood and started to feel insecure, Jonathan Mercier cursed him with _Exegestai! Suddenly, the Death Eater went all bug-eyed, threw off his mask and began prancing around the street shouting: _

_"There is no woman's sides  
Can bide the beating of so strong a passion  
As love doth give my heart; no woman's heart  
So big, to hold so much. They lack retention.  
Alas, their love may be called appetite,  
No motion of the liver, but the palate,  
That suffer surfeit, cloyment, and revolt.  
But mine is all as hungry as the sea,  
And can digest as much!"_

_                                                --The Twelfth Night (II.iv.91–101)_

            With another wave of his wand, another Death Eater became preoccupied with a spirited recitation of a poem called _The Bridge of Tay! by William Topaz McGonagall who is widely renowned as the world's least talented poet… ever:_

_Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!_

_Alas! I am very sorry to say_

_That ninety lives have been taken away_

_On the last Sabbath day of 1879,_

_Which will be remember'd for a very long time._

_'Twas about seven o'clock at night,_

_And the wind it blew with all its might,_

_And the rain came pouring down,_

_And the dark clouds seem'd to frown,_

_And the Demon of the air seem'd to say-_

_"I'll blow down the Bridge of Tay."_

_When the train left Edinburgh_

_The passengers' hearts were light and felt no sorrow,_

_But Boreas blew a terrific gale,_

_Which made their hearts for to quail,_

_And many of the passengers with fear did say-_

_"I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay."_

_                                                --McGonagall, The Bridge of Tay_

Mercier had successfully bewitched four more Death Eaters, who were now taking every other line of various terrible poems from centuries earlier. He giggled as all four erupted into the climactic scene of _Bats! with accompanying hand motions. _

"Remarkable, Mister Mercier. It's too bad that you chose the wrong side."

"Look, Mister Mysterious, do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?"

"Excuse me?" Mister Mysterious winced and sneered.

"Oh… no… I bet you're going to start going into this longwinded speech like 'mark my words I'll destroy all the kittens in the world!' or 'soon… (bwa ha ha) all the laughter and starlight and good intentions of the all the Ages shall at last be mine!' For goodness' sake…"

"Actually, I was planning to go out with a bang."

"Yes, but can you back your little plan up?"

"Sure."

"Right, then. Let's try this one last time. On three, ok? One… two…"

_"Snakas!" Mister Mysterious shouted. Green wisps of smoke emerged from the tip of his scepter and twisted their way towards Jonathan. They pulled together to form the huge body of an enormous hissing ghost-snake._

At the same time, Jonathan had cast his attack, _"Avis!" From his wand issued a volley of flames that quickly resolved themselves into a huge flock of flame-birds. Although the flock was able to distract the ghostly snake, Jonathan had to leap into the air to scarcely evade the beast's fangs. By this time, the ghost snake had solidified, and managed to connect his swishing tail to his chest, throwing him at least thirty feet into the solid wall. He pulled himself to his feet, though bricks were still cascading from the crumbling face of the old factory. The remaining Death Eaters had moved out of the snake's path and were now gathering the dead or wounded into Arctus' finished circle._

He knew what to do. He stomped right over to the leader of the team, stuck out his arm with fists clenched, and finished, _"Accio face!" Needless to say, Mister Mysterious was quite surprised to find his nose seemed to have fallen in love with Mercier's left hand and decided to fling itself with great speed in it's direction. _

The man fell backward, and slumped to the floor. Before he tipped over, he managed to lift his staff slightly, and mumble, _"Dreinen!"_

The remaining two Death Eaters stood in stunned disbelief, trying to understand what had happened. One Summoned their master into the circle, and the other had enough prescience to step into the very center and exclaim triumphantly, "We shall be avenged! Mark my words, Wizard, we'll get you for this!"

"And my little dog too?" Jonathan threw a knife at the Wizard of Oz enthusiast, who surprisingly didn't turn into a tearful bundle of black robes, and cast the Apparition. With a shimmer and faint _pop! the entire group was gone._

"That was pointless…" he said to no one in particular. 

Still, he continued his trek. Jonathan Mercier, limping towards the Hope Street Cathedral, made a mental note to chalk up four more Death Eaters on his _List o' Kills he'd received for his last birthday (inappropriate puns about the way they died would appear from time to time). He also made a mental note to stab Sam in the eye with his own wand the next time he mentioned policy._


	5. Drained

Chapter 5

Drained

**_ _**

_"I can't hide from you_

_As all my fears bleed through_

_No, It's nothing new_

_You call to me, I run from you_

_And if you want me_

_My confidence divides_

_My heart knows nothing at all_

_I'm waiting for a sign_

_I'm drained…"_

_-Dissonance_

Opening on the door was hardly an easy task, as the battle had drained Mercier completely. He struggled and began to pound the door madly for several minutes. Mercier then took a rest on the stone steps and noticed a small handwritten sign saying "PRESS THIS BUTTON." There was a large red arrow pointing to a rectangular button on the far side of the alcove. 

_Okay… Mercier thought. __Stupid, stupid. So he pressed the button. The sign changed to reply to his thoughts, "THAT YOU ARE…" A moment later, it shifted again to add, "IDIOT!" _No wonder so many people don't like churches,_ he thought. Therefore, he casually drew his wand, and prodded the panel. It promptly decided to burst into flames._

There was a loud unlocking of locks (you may know that unlocking locks likely loudly unlock), and then the door opened with a whirr of machinery followed by a loud hiss. 

"Neat," Jonathan muttered to himself. "Hydraulic movement system. Haven't seen one of those… ever." 

As the huge oak doors whizzed open, he glimpsed Father Laurislair sweeping around the room tirelessly organizing the main hall for anyone who happened to stumble into the empty cathedral. Jonathan thought nothing of his odd behavior though, and put it off to being just another Catholic quirk… Always ready for… anything… Fire, pestilence, plague, levitating mongoose with exploding purple mice stuck in its feathers… (that disaster only happened once, in 1770's, where an illegal Glibbering Yeck ate several early drafts of the Declaration of Independence). Visitors certainly wouldn't have problems finding a seat, though Laurislair's robes tended to billow dangerously.

Ignoring the peculiar man, Jonathan jumped into a nearby confessional, and slid the door shut. Reaching under the seat, he produced a worn dusty bible. He casually leafed through the pages, until he stopped at a gently glowing page. 

_The things we do for security, he thought. __All this magic buzzing around, and we resort to these weird muggle gadgets. This was a… Genelic spanner? Sam said it's a web-like thing that checks your identity. Scans your finger, palm, and… __genelic… no, genetic,__ prints all at once. Really good security, they say, 'cuz Polyjuice only changes your shape, but… so weird…_

Mercier heard Laurislair stumble outside and the crash and shatter of breaking glass. He had half a mind to jump out and repair the glass with a few swish-and-flicks, but he knew that the Father would probably resent the act. He liked to keep the cathedral itself as natural ("Muggly," as Laurislair put it) as possible. Firmly choosing against it, he turned his attention to the gently glowing page, and muttered, "Daniel. Twelve. Three."

There was a locking noise and a quiet whirring of machinery as Jonathan's heart leapt into his neck.

About ten seconds later, the confessional doors unlocked once again. He slammed the doors shut behind him as he walked down a short metallic hallway in silence. At the end of the white hall, he touched a featureless silver panel at the side of the door. It flashed green and a long and altogether nasty-looking scanning thingy shot out of the wall. Looking behind him, he saw the scanner reached back at the now-absent confessional booths. It started glowing a hazy blue, then a synthesized voice said: "Identified: Jonathan Mercier. Access Granted. Proceed through the doors… now." He recognized the pointy scanner as a Hawthorne Aurora Magus. Apparently, it could read a person's aura, establishing identity and detecting anyone's conscious deception of the Department's security. He felt quite dizzy and… strangely yellow… whenever a very large HAM passed over him. 

At that moment a door emerged from the bare wall. It reminded him of the huge doors they put on bank vaults in some old Western movie he saw earlier that year. He pulled down on a large latch on the left and the door opened with a soft hiss. Slipping inside, the door sealed itself and disappeared into the again featureless wall. 

It is now that the Author, in his limitless intelligence, grace, cuteness, and skill, would like to provide the background information of this, the Department of Mysteries. Please hold all questions for the end. Or, better yet, just light them aflame and see how hot you can get your car's gas tank. 

As you know, or may have guessed, or haven't, this Department is meant to handle all the nasty thingies no one in their right mind would want to. Of course, most of what they do is totally "hush-hush." Of course, lots of people we don't really like talking about would simply love to get in on the secret. Of course, the Department can't allow that sort of thing. It's just not nice.

And so, twenty-seven years ago, the Ministry quietly built this wonderful little dungeon doodad underneath the Hope Street Cathedral. Now, for the intents and purposes of this story (all of which are both malfeasant and recondite), I assume that religion of any kind isn't really that big of a deal for modern wizards (when I was a kid…), which is why it's just so gosh darned clever of the Ministry to build the Department in the middle of a dangerous, nasty area a couple miles underneath a highly unpopular building. Naturally, there's all sorts of wonderful magical security floating around, but nothing pleases old men more than to buy worthless things they never use. 

Thusly, magic/muggle technology was born! Most notably, and more recently, the folks at the Department decided to install some of these magic/muggle hybrids, such as the HAM you read about just earlier, or totally muggle things like the DNA scanning bible. "Why" you ask? Well, would you ever expect a professional Evil Overlord such as little Voldemort to know the first thing about genetics or what have you? Of course not. After all, the Death Eaters hate everything muggle. What would they know about science? (There is the problem of muggle things not working around big amounts of magic, as explained by Hermione in the Goblet of Fire. My excuse is that the amount of muggle science and magic isn't different enough to screw each other up. OK? Thank you)

There's five hallways, branching off of the main chamber, including the entrance through which Mercier arrived, the weapons locker and shooting range, the dormitories, an apparition lobby (where supplies and personnel can be apparated to and from most anywhere in the world), and the infamous infirmary. Moving on, the Department of Mysteries is rather… Hogwartsian for lack of a better term (which is why I made it up just now). That is, the underground building seems to be simple enough… but isn't. Rooms and hallways shift, and some only appear when one's bladder is, as Dumbledore once said, exceptionally full. And now, back to the story.

At that exact moment, thirty-seven and a half feet to the northeast, Hieronymus Bode firmly concluded that the world had gone, to put it as professionally as possible, absolutely nutters. And he _hated _it. In fact, had anyone peeked into his brain cavity at that moment, they would have known that Hieronymus Bode hated quite a lot of things. He hated his house (because it was too small, and he hated the wallpaper Mrs. Bode had picked out). He hated having to refer to his wife as "Mrs. Bode" in his internal monologues (since his brain had a mind of it's own, apparently). He hated the alarming number of internal monologues he was having while he was busy hating things (after all, hateful people hate having their hating halted by harmful histrionics). Most of all, however, he hated alliteration with large words (he desired to give onomatopoeia a nice solid _thwump! bowf! _and _shplggt! _over the head a few times with a heavy mallet). He did, however, like golf (for obvious reasons).

Suffice it to say, then, that Hieronymus was not a likeable man. He was tremendously short, with a long, pointy nose and a ridiculous name (even by wizarding standards). He rarely spoke, never smiled, and habitually made people squirm by standing in front of their desks, while peering at them with a blank face and abnormally wide eyes. He was fat, and pale, and had a nasty private sneer that he was quite proud of. He used it often, especially when he was finding new things to hate. He was using it now, for Hieronymus Bode had found something new to hate, bringing the list to an estimated 978.

Precisely thirty-seven and a half feet to the southwest, by the entrance to the main chamber, a figure in torn black robes stumbled through the main entrance, asked for a glass of panda, and proceeded to topple over. Anyone who cared to listen on his way down might have heard him mumble a report that a giant purple rabbit had transfigured his mother into a bucket of paint. To this day no one has sufficiently proven otherwise.

Nonetheless, there were shouts of alarm from all over the enormous circular chamber. As concerned onlookers flocked from their desks from all parts of the room to see what the upset was, the Department Directors be seen standing at their windows or doors at the sides of the marble space.

Bode slid off his specially raised chair in a swift movement that knocked a number of telephone books he'd found a few weeks earlier to the floor. Shuffling to the outermost fringes of the gathered assembly, he bellowed, _"Tocar Signum!"_ with volume surprising for such a tiny fellow. With a _crack_, black smoke fountained from the tip of his wand, which was nearly as long as he was tall. The smoke itself was not remarkable, in itself. It simply billowed near the ceiling a few feet above the heads of his herded underlings. What it did next was, however. A horrific and piercing scream poured down on the gathered as the smoke erupted in hideous red flame, reaching down like the many fingers of some revolting monster. Not one witch or wizard in that place was left standing, excepting Mister Hieronymus Bode and a grimace several sizes too big for his face. He either kicked or walked over most of the people there, shouting certain creative words that would give many a frail grandmother cardiac failure. 

"GET UP YOU FLAGITIOUS CARAPACES!" he screamed. When most remained on the floor, he took to lighting their robes on fire. Once everyone was finally one their feet, he extinguished the flames (somewhat like a child who's been ordered to clean up all his toys. 

"You _will _get back to work," he commanded with surprising calmness. As the group took their seats, and the distracted scratch of quill to parchment resumed, he added, "The next person to leave their seat will win a private lesson from me on why the Americans meant by 'cruel and unusual punishment.'" Somewhere, someone coughed. "YOU! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?" he shouted at an old man seated nearby. The old man looked up from his papers as his quill exploded, squirting black ink over the pile. He ignored this, however, as he was quite distracted by a pair of venomous eyes and a surly frown situated three feet above the ground. The fellow had the appearance of a man who just found his wife in bed with the neighbor—and his mother. "GET THIS MAN TO THE INFIRMARY!" Bode gestured in Jonathan's general direction. However, as there was only one pile of snoring wizard, specific directions were not necessary. The elderly gentleman hobbled over to the heap of robes, strained downward at the waist, and slowly scooped the sleeping wizard over his shoulder. Turning around, he saw Bode's face contorted in repressed rage, and ran down a nearby hallway with surprising speed. Hot in pursuit, Bode took the time to publicly embarrass several people, poison the office's coffee supply, and sweep everything off every desk along the way.

Nonetheless, Bode could do these things very quickly and was soon on his way to the Pit of Ceaseless Horror and Pain also known as the Infirmary.

Walking into the infirmary, one would immediately note it's total lack of weirdness. In fact, it was an astonishingly organized and clean room, with spotless white tile floors, and colorless walls molded into a plethora of drawers, sinks, and beds. The closest thing to alarming was the icy cold that pervaded every surface of that place. The beds were warm enough, but a barefoot wanderer would be greeted by the freezing ground. It wasn't particularly _evil, just kind of… disquieting and uncomfortable. Nonetheless, it was into this room that Bode and a feeble gentleman strode into. Though Bode would linger for quite some time, the unnamed man unloaded Mercier into one of the many empty beds and galloped out again without a word._

"Jonathan… I'll have you know that you are a _lazy, stupid, fool." Bode whispered in Jonathan's ear. As you would expect, he didn't respond. "Sound good to you?"_

For the next five minutes, there was hardly a sound, besides the _drip, drip, drip of a broken faucet. To break the uncomfortable silence, Bode wheeled over a short stair and proceeded to slap Mercier across the face 148 consecutive times. If anybody asked, he knew he could say it'd been part of whatever assault had put him in this condition. __If only people would FILE THE DAMN REPORTS like they're supposed to, he thought, __these things wouldn't happen… The most puzzling thing was why Mercier would have come alone. __Croaker must have asked him to come, but he would have been with Christophell. They should __have come together. Oh… by the Jorglefish's Left Nostril… Croaker wouldn't have… But Bode knew, as well as anyone, that Lien Croaker's obsessions run more than deep__ enough to make him do incredibly stupid things. Thankfully, for Mercier's left cheek's sake, Mindy Presh decided to make her entrance at that precise moment. _

"_Finally! What took you so long? Too busy 'treating' that fellow from the weapon's wing to do your job?" Bode grinned demeaningly._

"Oh, shut up, Bode. Don't give me that crap. Some idiot decided to go and splinch himself in the Apparating Lobby—right into the cafeteria's food shipment. Peaches and cheeses in places I didn't even know existed. Well, now I do." Mindy shuddered. It goes without saying that Miss Mindy Presh was the sort of person who wears brown micro-fiber elastic robes with six pockets and a black drawstring about 5/8 inch in diameter. What that meant no one knows exactly. However, it is certain that Miss Mindy Presh greatly enjoys cheddar and broccoli soup, simply because it reminds her of camp food. She enjoys brushing her black hair at all times of day, and wearing lipstick colored like those red crayons people use to draw lips. When she thinks no one is looking, she enjoys wearing men's pants on her head and impersonating Hieronymus Bode. She's one of those sexy yet aloof, patrician yet peasant, attractive yet repulsive, sensual yet innocent, girl next door yet girl next door (if one lived next to a mansion), uptown yet down to earth, selfish yet endearing, naughty yet nice, obedient yet rebellious, ice tea yet Jack Daniels, intelligent yet unknowledgeable (wink, wink), new wave yet old-fashioned, vixens. ****

"I believe you know Mister Mercier…" the tiny man lifted Jonathan's head up by the hair to help her see. "It seems he's decided to get himself nice and cursed. I've tried all the… usual measures."

"Criminal abuse?" Mindy shifted her weight to her other foot. "That's my job. Let me have a look." Tall, blonde, and ridiculously pretty, one might not be one to greatly enjoy the pain and suffering of others. But she did. That's why she and Hieronymus Bode got along so well. As they say, "sadism is the stuff that binds us…" She pushed her boss out of the way, reached into her robes and produced a tiny red stone on a thin golden cord. Muttering under her breath, she swung the pendant over his body, pausing now and again to prod a knee, or flick a foot, or scratch gently at his hand. _"Aurum fosep hajeneh woes keem gwehveal… Oh… bollocks…__"  Horribly_

"What?" Bode asked. He was standing on his toes, with a sort of I-hope-it's-profoundly-deadly-and-let's-not-forget-the-unbearably-painful demeanor. "What's happened?"

"Well, I can tell you that he's been in a fight…"

"Grand. Now I know why you work here… nothing gets by you."

"Shut up you sex-deprived troll," she shot back with a haughty smile. "He was in a fight…" she cast a poisonous glare at Bode. "A good one, I think. He definitely won… well, I think... but… whomever he was fighting did something nasty to him," She squinted at Mercier as though she was able to see something no one else could, which, of course, she was. "He was paralyzed by something first… then…" Over Mercier's forehead, the pendant turned black. Quite possibly for theatrical effect, so did most of the room. The lamps flared, and their flames went dark with a _pop_. A faint, but otherworldly howl coursed throughout the room. The shadow of that pendant became tall and menacing… and then boiled away. They stood for a while, staring at each other, and the air tingled. Mindy's eyes remained bent on Bode. Slowly, her hands relaxed, and she trembled. 

"He's Draining," she said, sitting down on the edge of a nearby bed, poised as if readying to run out the door. "As you'd expect, it's a terrible and ancient curse."

"There seems to be a lot of those… I remember that back in the day people (referring to himself) would simply transfigure their enemies into pink watering cans. Painless, effective, and ecologically sound." Bode said gravely, eyes fixed on Jonathan. He had a big collection back home. "What does this one do?"

"Well, if you think of life as a muggle battery. You're familiar with them, right?" Bode nodded. His muggle-born wife, Mrs. Bode, had a vault filled with empty batteries at Gringotts for reasons she would not explain. Mindy Presh continued, "All the time, it's losing more and more of it's energy. Eventually it goes dead. That's _Dreinen in a nutshell."_

"And so do you…" Bode stated thoughtfully. "What can we do, then?"

"Nothing…" she shrugged. "Actually, the Drain doesn't kill you… not for a while anyways. Right now, for example, Jonathan's simply unconscious. Over the next few hours, his condition will worsen. He'll go into a coma for a few days. But after that…" she trailed off.

"He'll die?" Bode seemed puzzled by Jonathan's seeming resoluteness to continue living.

Mindy walked over to a bookshelf, peered at the various resources to choose from, and decided on an untitled one bound in black. She leafed through the pages, and squinted at one in the back of the book, nodding. "It says, '_Dreinen, also known as the Draining Curse is an unblockable attack that absorbs the energies necessary for life over the course of five to six hours. At the end of that time, the Cursed will enter a comatose state. This curse cannot be treated by any known means; Potions, Counter-Curses, and Magical Artifacts have been shown to have no effect."_

"So, what can you do?" Realizing he sounded concerned, he covered hurriedly. "We've blown a million galleons training him—it's be a shame to let one curse to be the end of him."

"Hold on…" She scanned the next few pages. "Aha! _'Dreinen possesses numerous side effects, most notably the… this is odd… __permanent distortion of the Cursed."_

"What the hell does that mean? He'll be horribly scarred? We're in luck—I doubt anyone will know the difference."

"Be quiet, you insufferable sea-squid. I'm trying to concentrate," she said distractedly. _Distort… _"Well, this might not be so bad after all!"

"What?" Bode asked.

"Well, this book was written back in the 1950's just after Grindelwald was defeated. Now, Grindelwald was best known for…" she asked invitingly.

"DISTORTION!"

"Very good! Here's a cookie." She conjured a badly burnt cookie and lobbed it at his head. It missed, but she pretended it hadn't. "Now, Distortion, of course, is very specific, very difficult to learn, and very _illegal_. You know why?"

"Because… let's see… it…"

She made a buzzing noise. "ERNNNK! So sorry, your time is up. A Distortion is a type of curse that changes the very core of something, or _someone_, most commonly. Voldemort was evil enough, you know, with his Death Eaters, and massacres, that crazed obsession with death, and, supposedly, boxers adorned with little pink bunnies, but _Grindelwald._" Apparently, Mindy noticed something quite interesting on the wall, and proceeded to stare at it, but continued distractedly. "If the public knew half of what he did… that any of those rumors were _true, well… _he'd_ make Voldemort look like a tiny chihuahua, wouldn't he? Anyways, back to the point. Evil cannot create; it can only corrupt. Trolls and Ogres, for example, were Trees once. Great Trees, Distorted by old curses and confusions He resurrected. The Death Eaters too… He couldn't make new things, only ruin and twist them. Vampires, Werewolves, Bodachs and Hags. All are humans corrupted by various kinds of Distortion."_

 "Oh damn." Bode looked downcast.

"My dear, Hieronymus, you look positively despondent!" Mindy Presh grinned widely.

"I know! I just ran out of silver bullets and stakes!" he exclaimed. Mindy picked him up by his robes and pressed him against the wall.

"_One more word out of you, and I will make you wish you had never been born," she whispered pointedly._

"Actually, Miss Presh, wishing _you had never been born would make more sense." Bode found himself thrown into the hallway._

"AND DO NOT COME BACK!"

"Must be PMS," Bode shrugged stomping back to his office.


	6. Shopping List

Chapter 6

Shopping List

****

"The wheels go round and the sunset creeps behind   
Street lamps, chain-link and concrete   
A little piece of paper with a picture drawn floats   
On down the street till the wind is gone   
The memory now is like the picture was then   
When the paper's crumpled up it can't be perfect again"

_-Linkin Park****_

****

Towers of metal sat there groaning under the pressure of a thousand hideous adornments. Long, and thin. Squishy, and cold. Purple, and other shades of purple. Hideously well-polished tile flooring shone garishly beneath it all, serving only to double the perversion reflected in its gleaming surface. Wheels rolled over it, squeaking as children wailed, and bright red liquids that blazed like blood spilled onto the ground. 

Such is the supermarket, and Samuel Christophell was trapped in the middle of it all. He was a tall man. Tall and wide. Very wide. In fact, one could park a brand new jumbo jet in his chest cavity, if one could find enough people to scrub the plane clean afterwards. He was very irritated, not that he showed it. This irritation was not one of the skin. No, for this irritation could not be treated by any cream or lotion known to man, because they would have had to be really, really strong. He would have needed a prescription, at any rate. He didn't have one.

An irritated Sam Christophell is not a good thing at all—unless you have a solid brick wall between you and him; though the wall would likely only hide you as he crushed through it, covering you in its bricks. You'd be better off with an old sandwich, and something shiny to distract him.

He was shopping. That wasn't too bad. However, shopping for someone else certainly was. 

Only and hour ago, he met with Jonathan Mercier at the _Lazy Llama Bar and Grill._ Of course, they'd met because something was afoot. Something nasty, certainly. At any rate, Jonathan had received word from the Department of Mysteries that he was to meet with Croaker as soon as possible. Jonathan left for the Felle City right away, but Sam's message had been slightly different. He was to meet with Croaker, but first he was to "Gather some ingredients," as Croaker had put it. Now, when Samuel went to the contact point to receive the list, he'd expected it to contain a wide assortment of weird and mysterious artifacts, chemicals, and organs. Instead, he'd received a slip of paper ordering the purchase of eggs, olive oil, and a number of other amenities. The most exotic item was "Milk-the kind with the green label." 

A transfiguration expert, highly qualified secret agent, and member of the most elite group of wizards and witches on the planet or not—he had a job to do and, by gum it, he was going to do it. 

Frowning, he squeezed his way through the double doors of the grocery store. The aisles were not meant for a man of his breadth, but he managed. Though he knocked item after item to the floor, he trudged his way down the row, accompanied by the friendly whine of his cart.

Naturally he looked ridiculous. He was much taller (and wider) than your average man, he had a large and imposing face with long blond hair spilling down for several feet, and, above all, was dressed in huge billowing red robes that could have sheltered a lion, a pack of wild wolves, and a bus. Thankfully these things were absent, since he was allergic to cat hair and hated bus fumes. _Jonathan was right,_ he thought. _Croaker is an ass. I knew he was nutty to begin with, but this… the stress must be getting to him. _Croaker's love of food was legendary the Ministry. Though tall, and gaunt, with a haunted glint in his eyes, the very mention of a hamburger, a pie, or even the latest brand of bottled water would set him off on an exuberant speech proclaiming the glory of all foods, liquid and solid, sweet and sour, spicy and tangy. Mindy Presh had once tried to reason with him, telling him that a Conjured broth is identical in every way possible to the muggle version of French onion or tomato soup. Nonetheless, he held true to his belief that he could tell the difference. From then on, every day Croaker randomly selected someone, regardless of rank or position, to do his shopping. He was **the** Head of the Department, after all. Even the Directors couldn't be spared his wrath. When Bode had refused when January 27th rolled around, Croaker managed to transfigure him into a chicken. Croaker's private refrigerator was rumored to contain several thousand pounds of meat alone. Sam was reluctant to think what would have happened had _he _refused.

Scooping cheeses ("the ones that come in the shiny plastic wrapping") and some desserts ("those thingies with the sprinkles and the frosting on top") into his cart, he checked the list. Noting that everything had been gathered, he turned to leave.

It is now that the author, in his divinely inspired, arcane, and mentally impaired wisdom, would like to take another break from _Backslider _for an informative history lesson. Quiet down! You in the back! Some of us are trying to _learn _here!

The 1940's were not that fun. They could have been, of course, if it wasn't for that Hitler fellow. But it wasn't all his fault, you see. 

During the eight months between September and May 1941, German planes carried out more than a hundred air strikes on England, seventy-one of which were attacks on London itself. They bombed London for ninety-two nights running, and made heavy raids on Coventry, Plymouth, Liverpool, and other British cities. They did a lot of damage, as 43,000 British men, women and children lost their lives; many historical buildings were destroyed. 

But what if Adolphus Hitler, and the Germans weren't totally responsible for all this death? Of course, Hitler's Holocaust alone left millions upon millions of people dead or wishing to be, but these things were more complicated.

It was at this time that the Dark Lord Grindelwald began his War. An alliance of muggles and wizards, elves and ghosts sought to destroy Grindelwald forever. But it came at a price—a price that would have been greater had they not acted at all. 

Grindelwald did not create Hitler. He merely gave him the knowledge, charisma, and will to do destroy all living things. He tricked others into ignoring the German threat, and let his wickedness and evil mature. He discovered, and created, Dark Magic to poison, destroy, subjugate, and distort. The most famous breed of magic he used was Distortion, mentioned earlier. This brand of curses allows the caster to reshape the very intrinsic laws of natural life. Vampires and bodachs had existed for millennia, and wreaked their own terror in their own way, but it was Grindelwald who learned the powers to create Trolls from trees, and the Dementors from muggle men tempted by the power he promised. By the age of 50, Grindelwald had to his credits the creation, or friendship, of thousands of Dark Creatures, such as Goblins and Gryphons and Giants.

Of them all, the goblins were his most prized followers. Hideous, rage-filled, and powerfully magical, they were Grindelwald's ideal servants. Their smile could curdle the blood and their laugh could make milk sour and cause fruit to fall off trees. Grindelwald knew that they were desperate to prove themselves to their Dark Lord.

And so began the Last Goblin Rebellion.

Thousands of goblins: tiny, fast, and vicious, ruinous fiends left their mountain dwellings deep beneath the Earth, where unimaginable horrors still live unknown to the oldest ghosts. They tore through the forests and over rivers, destroying everything in their path. They hated the light, and they hated the dark even more. The smell of blood was all that drove them. That, and their adoration for their Master. Finally, they came to the great cities of England. There, too, did they wreak their havoc, destroying churches, and homes, and businesses. Out of the 127 so-called "air strikes" upon Britain, only thirty involved planes. 

1940 will live on forever, in the memory of no one actually, as the year of the Rebellion. Ogres, Trolls, Goblins, Werewolves, and Dementors… About 30,000 British citizens were slaughtered at the hands of these vile creatures, but their killers would never be known—or at least remembered.

The Ministry of Magic, in the largest mobilization of its forces in history, systematically erased the memories of the goblin attack from every muggle brain, and destroyed all evidence of their involvement of existence, and sealed them in their mountain prison, ensuring that the truth could never be known. All those lost lives were simply attributed to German bombers. A number of goblins, those who were far more well-behaved or unaffiliated with the Rebellion, were doomed to a worse fate: a century of servitude at Gringotts Wizard Bank, under the supervision of the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures.

What Samuel Christophell saw at that moment was, indeed, something very rare, and positively unheard of: a goblin, intent to kill. Not for sixty years had a one looked upon a human being with such a murderous gleam in its eyes.

Sam didn't care to have this honor, but the goblin laughed. The milk three aisles over swiftly expired. Sam looked like someone had poured red ants in his robes.

_This isn't **that** bad…_ Sam thought as cheerfully as he could. Thinking back to Defense Against the Dark Arts with Professor Gugnam, he remembered that although a goblin was violent (and strong enough to pull violent off reasonably well), a fully trained wizard would have little difficulty. Back in 6th Year, Professor Gugnam, a delightful fellow, had locked each of his students in separate dungeons for their final exam, and released a variety of Dark Creatures; nothing excessively violent, of course. Sam's exam consisted of a nest of vampires, a cave troll, a pair of werewolves, and a goblin, for example. The vampires were relatively easy (wooden spike + heart = POOF!), and Sam had an interesting conversation with the troll about how Machiavellian politics apply to modern art movements ("Oog oog!" and "Glug!" are more expressive than one might think). However, since the end of term exam was on June 8th, the pair of werewolves were, in fact, several lawyers out from Manchester. The goblin actually posed the most difficulty… 

It'd leaped at Sam's neck first, but he knew that wasn't a good thing at all, and went on to apply his fist to the tiny monster's head, flinging it across the room. In the end, though, the only way to stop the seemingly inexhaustible goblin was to levitate it six feet in the air, and bounce the screaming mass off the walls.

Readying his wand to _Wingardium Leviosa _the goblin into the frozen foods aisle, he found that during his pensive romp down Memory Lane, something nasty had happened: there were now two possibilities:

1. Goblins can split in two, four, or even eight (hundred) other ones

2. The original goblin had friends; lots of friends.

Sam was inclined to go with the latter, as revoltingly pale or sickly green goblins were pouring into the aisle giggling as the muggle shoppers and employees ran screaming out of the store. 

            "Um… yes, so… um…" Sam began (rather cleverly under the circumstances, he thought).

The goblin leader, identified by his particularly large size and particularly green skin squinted his red eyes into cruel slivers. 

Sam continued, "On behalf of the Ministry of Magic, I order you to stop where you are! You are under arrest!"

A note to the reader: the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures does not recommend ordering or threatening a goblin horde. Sam didn't know this, so he did it again.

"Stop right there!" he cried as the goblins tightened their circle around him. They'd already overturned a shelf, splattering apple juice onto the polished floors. Sam was wondering what would be next to splatter onto the ground, and hoped it wouldn't be something… of his.

With resolve, courage, and supreme foolishness, Sam decided to make a break for the door. He hadn't yet lifted his right foot when several dozen (not that he cared to count at this point, by the way) of the screaming goblins leapt onto his robes, biting and scratching into the cloth.

Realizing that running away would be highly painful and quite likely to fail, Sam plans took a turn for the more interesting.

"_Gibaurack!_" he shouted desperately. Although the intended effect would have been to scare the goblins off with a bright flash of light, a number of them suddenly transfigured into wondrously shiny balls of aluminum foil who floated off his arms and legs (which was still a success of sorts, in his book). Samuel Christophell realized something rather fortunate here. Of all his numerous skills, (including manual labor, being odd looking, and collecting interesting picture frames) his foremost was transfiguration. For reasons unknown, he'd always been strangely gifted in turning things into something altogether unnatural. Perhaps it was that he had an overactive imagination, but it was not something one analyzes when being attacked by evil and deadly monsters.

Waving his wand frantically, he happened to launch a range of squishy, sticky, and smooshy things at his attackers. Yet, for every goblin he sent flying off his person more were ready to take its place. 

In desperation and inspiration, he remembered a charm Professor Hulmo had taught him over winter break to fight boredom, which he affectionately remembered as the Fruit Smoothie Charm.

"_Litus!_" he summoned. With a whiz, every product in the store containing so-called "natural fruit flavors" flew towards the frantic wizard. Ice cream ("with new lime flavor!"), hard candy ("now with real lemon!"), and, of course, every banana, apple, pear, and, most happily, pineapple, formed a tornado of deliciousness spiraling about his figure. A flick sent the ice cream hurtling to the left, a swish pelted the hard candies to the right, and a thwip plunged everything else at Sam's cloak.

It is noteworthy that Sam had the presence of mind to use the Smoothie Charm, since, among other things, goblins abhor natural fruit flavors. Of course, though he was also totally unaware of this fact, it was a good idea.

The damage was already rather severe. Most of the shelves had been knocked over by flying goblin torsos or airborne produce. The walls were cracked in parts, though whether that was the result of the goblin infestation or negligence on the part of the owner remains to be discovered. However, one thing was certain: Sam was certainly not covered with goblins anymore, which is, as anyone who's been in Sam's situation would affirm, an excellent thing. 

Most of the goblins had either been scared off by the strawberries or levitated to and then dropped from the ceiling. The goblin leader, squinting through his sickening eyelids had run off to Aisle 3 to regroup with his biggest soldiers.

Six aisles to the left, Vice-Plimf Gorbag Borra was not a very happy goblin. Of course, to anyone who knew goblins, they weren't exactly known for their positive outlook on life. More aptly, then, we could say Gorbag Borra was _more unhappy _than usual. 

Goblins are long lived—which is good for their race since they spend so much time biting and maiming, maintaining a stable population usually takes second place. One might expect that a species who so enjoys making mayhem and being generally unsavory would be pleased as punch (evil punch!) to be set loose from their mountains to the north. He was actually, but there was still something bothering him.

Three days earlier, a man appeared at their doorstep, robed in black. His face covered in white, he claimed that he could, and would unlock their dark gates in return for their temporary servitude. Like most humans do, he thought he was being exceedingly clever, telling them what they wanted to hear, and only those things he carefully chose to say. Yet goblins, like most magical creatures, rarely listen to the words of men, for their emotions and innermost secrets are laid bare before them. It was his heart, full of hatred and malice and long-suffering that convinced them to accept his conditions. 

But it was not their murderous mission, to kill a wizard named Samuel Christophell that was disquieting, for goblins generally enjoy murder and devastation. Instead, it was the man's final request, which, in return for freedom, the goblin leaders were more than willing to oblige. Deep in the core of the mountain, lay all their mightiest treasures. Artifacts as ancient as their people lay there, lost or forgotten in the shadows. Yet this man, an outsider, knew precisely what he wanted: A red stone, lit from within by some unknown flame. 

Where did he learn what riches they hoarded? How could he break the seals placed on their Door, when the mightiest goblin magic could not? What lay beneath his white mask? Something was wrong, here. Yet he hadn't the slightest idea what.

Six aisles to the left, Gorbag Borra was not a happy goblin… and with good reason.

Sam was encircled by a group of cackling and giggling monsters, screaming in delight, and jumping around. He had to get out of here. Yet he hadn't the slightest idea how. He knew that goblins, like elves, contained powers near that of the average wizard. Combined with their huge numbers, a struggle against a goblin attack would seem hopeless. Yet their disadvantage, however, lies in the fact that their powers are buried deep within their spirits, and are highly unfocused. Therefore, to all but the oldest among them, deliberate goblin magic would be negligible; like a gun with a jammed trigger. But sudden bursts of anger or fear, however, could be explosive… literally.

He knew he'd have to make his attack fast, powerful, and soon.

Stepping forward, the leaping goblin soldiers hissed and growled angrily. _Angry is just what we're not going for here…_ So, he switched strategies.

"Come here, little goblin!" he said. One of the goblins seemed thoroughly bemused and taken aback, like someone who is approached by a grizzly bear in the forest, who, for some reason, thinks you're her long lost cub.

Nonetheless, the goblin did inch forward, for goblins, excepting those accountants at Gringotts, are not renowned for their formidable wit. This particular goblin giggled cheerfully, making Sam struggle to hide a tortured grimace. "Come here!" he cooed, making baby noises. "Googy googy gooooo! Who's a good widdle gobwin?"

The goblin pointed at himself.

"That's right! And a _smart_ widdle gobwin too, right?"

The goblin nodded ecstatically. He was a Red Cap; tiny, energetic, and malevolent, they're easily recognized with their fiery red eyes and hat, believed to be dyed in the blood of their victims. This one, of course, fit all the criteria, but seemed tinier, younger, and, if possible, stupider than the others.

"Would my _cute widdle gobwin_ like some candy?"

The "cute" and "widdle" goblin seemed to understand, and screamed in delight. Sam reached for some packaged meat and passed it to the creature, which swallowed the filet, along with its Styrofoam container and plastic wrapping.

Lightly brushing his wand, now concealed in the folds of his robes, he coughed, "_Euphonos,_" a variation on the Confundus line of mind control charms. Specifically, _Euphonos_ forces animate objects to believe and do whatever they are told, though this only works on genuine idiots.

He pulled the dazed Red Cap closer, and murmured, "I want you to tell me, quietly, your name."

In a startlingly high-pitched and far-away voice, it replied, "I am Tarogol…" he poked at Sam's beard. "It is a nice wizard…"

"And what are you and your… friends doing here?"

"Tarogol is here… Tarogol was told."

"By whom?"

"His Master…"

"Who is?"

"Master Gorbag… nice, kind, Master…" the goblin answered distantly.

"Why is 'Master Gorbag' here?"

"Nice Master is here… to kill… nice wizard…."

Sam thought that was a fairly obvious answer. In hindsight, it was also a fairly obvious question.

"Me? Why does he want to kill me?"

"The Black Gate… black man…" responded the Red Cap dreamily. "Black man told Master… kill… nice wizard."

"But why?" Sam sighed.

"Tarogol doesn't know, he doesn't… no..."

"Alright… now who is this 'black man?'"

"He came… to the Gate… white mask… freed us… took a red Stone…" he explained.

"What kind of stone?" Sam asked.

"Tarogol doesn't know." 

"Okay, then… go with your friends, and tell your Master that you poisoned me."

Tarogol trudged over to his compatriots, and asked them to do something that sent them scurrying off six aisles to the left howling amusedly.

A few minutes later, Tarogol returned with a surly Vice-Plimf Borra at his side. Unfortunately, Sam was unconscious, or pretending to be. With a well placed curse, Borra sent Tarogol on his way, reluctantly leaving the "nice wizard" behind.

Vice-Plimf Borra squinted (more than usual) at Sam's motionless body. Apparently, Borra had believed the story, and chose to poke Sam with a long package of straws. 

            With a jerk, Sam leapt to his feet, grabbed Gorbag Borra's neck and lifted him into the air. The Vice-Plimf sqealed in horror.

"Do not struggle. Do not scream," Sam explained. "And I will not do anything… unnatural to you." Sam drew his wand with his free hand and transfigured some apples into water bottles, and then into electric fans which transformed into giant purple lizards. They scurried off never to be heard from again. He cast the _Malleus curse on a case of Coke cans, which compressed themselves to the size of a messy, sugary, aluminum thimble._

Gorbag stopped struggling, and Sam set him down roughly.

"Now, Gorbag, I've had a word with your very own Tarogol, and he told me something quite interesting about you."

Gorbag shifted uneasily and replied in a deep, rumbling tone, "What did that grelping snerlk tell you?"

"It seems you're trying to kill me…" Sam said, placing a shimmering invisibility charm around them. "Now, I want to know precisely who it was who sent you."

"I do not know."

"And I don't want to have to put a charm on you to get my answers, nor do I wish to insult your intelligence, but if you don't tell me what I want to know…" Sam trailed off and set some napkins on fire for theatricality.

"I _am telling you the truth," Gorbag sighed angrily. "I do not know."_

"So, you didn't care to learn who it was that set you free?"

"It was not my place."

"What did he look like?"

"I do not know. He never removed his mask."

"His mask?"

"Yes… a white mask."

"I see."

"No… you do not," Gorbag frowned 

"What do you mean?" asked Sam.

"The man who freed us sent us to kill you. Yet you believe he is a Death Eater."

"Possibly… so what?"

"If he is a Death Eater, he would, as we are told, be doing the will of the Dark Lord Voldemort?"

"How do you know of Voldemort?"

"We were imprisoned beyond the Black Gate, but the earth, and the air, and His very own snakes tell us many things. He desires to kill The Boy Who Lived, does he not?"

"I'm asking the questions, here."

"And yet they are not very good ones, wizard," Gorbag mocked. "You would kill me… why would I withhold information that could save my life?"

Sam gazed into Gorbag's red eyes. Its fierce untamed eyes, or perhaps the magic that seemed to glow between them with some revealing light, convinced Sam that this goblin was different from the others. Perhaps he possessed some sort of hightened intelligence, or intuition, but Sam strangely felt that his eyes held no secrets, only cold rationality.

"Do you want to kill me?" Sam asked.

"Most definitely."

"Would you kill me if I gave you the chance?"

"No." 

Sam was confused. "Why is that?"

"I do not believe it is wise. You could kill me, and perhaps would do so if I outlived my usefulness… but I do not belive you would think it wise to do so either…" After a lingering pause, the goblin continued, "I would not kill you, but I would kill the masked wizard…"

"I see…"

"No you don't. That wizard, I'll have you know, released a plague of goblins upon his own people. That is something that not even the worst goblin could have done. You, however… do grocery shopping."

"Where is this masked man now?"

"He told us he had business to attend to… that he planned to use the Stone to accomplish that goal." Gorbag clarified.

"What was the stone he took?" 

"Tarogol speaks too much… I do not know…" 

"I don't believe you."

"Finally, wizard, you use some intellect." Gorbag grinned horribly. "The Stone is a treasure that was gifted to us by Lord Grindelwald in return for our service. It allowed us to create limitless stores of food and riches or even destroy cities with a flick of the wrist."

"The Last Goblin Rebellion…" Sam thought out loud.

"Yes… we were reluctant to part with it, but he was adamant. And he _did break the Black Gate. We felt is was a fair exchange. That Stone has the power to create, but also to ruin. We had survived without it for millennia, and Plimf Vurdoc felt it was little more than a toy." _

"You gave him _a weapon? It isn't a toy, is it?"_

"No, it most certainly is not." Gorbag frowned.

"Surely you knew he could use it against you!"

Gorbag fell silent.

"You agree with me, don't you? Voldemort does not keep his promises. Nor do his Death Eaters. Voldemort wants power, but the goblins, and the trolls, and the giants will all threaten that power eventually! I could kill you if you outlive your usefulness, but you told me you knew I wouldn't. Voldemort _would, and you know that too!"_

Gorbag stared pensively at the ground. "Samuel Christophell, I believe you. Vurdoc is a fool, and these most recent decisions make that clear. However, unlike your people, goblins do not tolerate ignorance, foolishness, or mistakes. I will help you." Those words had a sense of finality that made it apparent that Gorbag's pledge was one of urgent necessity and desperation. "Perhaps _my people should reevaluate our opinion of humanity. Perhaps you are not all as stupid as you appear… I will go with you, and, as long as I continue breathing, Voldemort will never see the Goblins outlive their usefulness."_

With that, Gorbag stomped away, and ordered his soldiers to hide. They were to hold silent and unknown until he sent word.

            Sam wiped his hand across the invisibility wall, silently shattering their. He turned and winked at Gorbag Borra, and led the way to the Department of Mysteries, hoping he wouldn't regret this.


End file.
